The invention relates to portable, electric powered appliances such as humidifiers, air purifiers and fans.
Portable electric appliances commonly have a power cord that is several feet long. The cord terminates with a plug that may be plugged into a wall socket to access a source of municipal power. This is done when the appliance is ready for or actually is in use. When not in use, as when being moved about or stowed, the power cord must be held or otherwise it will drag during transport. During storage it should be held or coiled for compactness and neatness.
Heretofore portable electric appliances have been equipped with means for holding their power cord. Vacuum cleaners, for example, commonly have hooks or cleats mounted to their vacuum tubes. Their power cords are wrapped over these along the tubes when the appliance is not in use. Other appliances have been equipped with means for retracting and storing the cord inside the appliance housing. These employ spring loaded reels and thus have moving parts and are more expensive. Others have had racks mounted to their housing for this purpose. Exemplary of these are those shown in U.S. Pat. Nos. 2,033,491, 3,476,331 and 6,003,804.
Most power cord holders have provided projections in one form or another. This presents little problem when the cord is wrapped about them. However, when the appliance is not in use these projections not only present a hazard, they also prevent the appliance from being placed flushly or a least closely aside a wall. Small appliances are commonly located on kitchen countertops where space is at a premium. Even those larger ones that are set upon floors, such as air purifiers, humidifiers, space heaters and fans, are preferably located closely aside a wall.
Accordingly, it is seen that a need has long existed for portable, electric powered appliances to be provided with power cord holders that are readily accessible and easy to use and yet which do not provide protrusions of significance when not in use. It thus is to the provision of such that the present invention is primarily directed.
In a preferred form of the invention, a portable electrically powered appliance has a housing, an electric load housed within the housing, and an electric power cord coupled with the load. The power cord extends out of the housing for connection to a source of electric power. The housing has a generally flat side formed with two recesses and two posts with manually gripable flanges. The posts are repositionably mounted to the housing side recesses for movement between a retracted position with their flanges generally coplanar with the housing side and an extended position with their flanges located outboard of the side. So constructed, the electric power cord may be wrapped about the posts for appliance transportation and storage with the posts in their extended positions and the posts retracted when the appliance is in use so that they do not present protrusions.